Although I think WordPoint generally works well as a word-by-word translator, this can sometimes be a drawback for language novices. If, for example, you click on an expression like aufs Neue, you'll get separate translations for auf and neu (WordPoint's dictionary ignores endings, conjugation, and capitalization), but not what they mean together (aufs Neue = anew, fresh, again). There is a similar problem for less-advanced users when they are confronted with a list of possible meanings for a word. If you place your cursor over the German verb lag, you'll see this list of alternatives: "lie, be lying, repose, rest, be stationed." WordPoint usually translates the infinitive form of any verb (in this case liegen), so you have to work from that. In many cases, this is not a problem. In fact, in this situation a novice might discover that German lag is a (past tense) form of the verb liegen and could probably figure out which of the five alternate meanings works best.
Although it usually treats all verbs as infinitives, WordPoint does recognize some past participles. It translated gelegen (used as an adjective) correctly as "located, situated," but only produced "attended" for besucht, omitting the other (and in this case correct) alternative "visited." WordPoint also tends to ignore the second part of compound words, which are very common in German. For fieberfrei the dictionary ignored frei and defined (correctly) only the first part of the word as "fever." Most users could probably deduce the "free of fever" meaning, but in the case of hyphenated words like Tropfstein-Grotte, you only get the second part of the word ("grotto"), ignoring the "limestone/stalactite" part.
Despite a few shortcomings, I think WordPoint is a helpful German-English/English-German dictionary program. For many users, it may be one of the best available computer dictionaries available. Users who understand WordPoint's weaknesses and can work around them will discover an almost seamless dictionary that works with email, text documents, online pages, and almost any other application. With the free 15-day trial version, it is certainly worth trying.
WordPoint Summary
• Pop-up dictionary for Windows & Palm OS• Windows 95, NT, and versions up through XP
• German and 12 other languages, 26 dictionaries (some as extra free downloads)
• Speech for English words only
• Palm version only allows one dictionary
• Publisher: WordPoint
• Price: US$15.00-20.00, depending on version and format (download or CD)
• Free 15-day trial version as download (41MB)